'The mob turned on us': Foreign reporters in Xinjiang

Chinese authorities have, unusually, welcomed
foreign reporters to Xinjiang since ethnic rioting broke out on Sunday in Urumqi between the Uighur
minority and Han Chinese. A Beijing-based agency has even offered to facilitate
travel, according to one writer
who blogs from Shanghai.
(CPJ hasn't confirmed his story. Have any other reporters been approached in
this way?)

Some Uighur protesters also welcome the foreign press,
according to Hong Kong newspaper Wen
Wei Po on July 7. "After drawing the attention of the [Chinese, Hong Kong, and international] reporters, these Uighur
women split up in groups and cried to the reporters, especially the ones who
are foreigners," while ignoring the Chinese journalists, the report says, in a translation
by the EastSouthWestNorth blog.

Yet open reporting hasn't been encouraged across the board.
Electronic communication is increasingly curtailed, and the pressures of
getting reports out amid ongoing violence are apparent in journalists' accounts
from the region. "About 50 Han Chinese, many carrying metal rods, shouted and
harassed a foreign reporter who walked by and would not let
another journalist with a video camera film the scene," The
Associated Press reported today.

"Then, the mob turned on us. They blocked our cameras,
not wanting the images of Han Chinese beating a Uighur to get out. I was
pushed. Then the group surrounded us and started yelling. They pushed us back
up a highway ramp where we were shooting. They yelled that western journalists
were biased against the Han Chinese and that we should delete our footage. One man tried to grab our
camera and then pulled out a baton and held it over his head as if he were
going to hit us. We turned around and ran."

Below is a transcript of public Twitter posts by Al-Jazeera English correspondent
Melissa Chan while she was reporting this
segment in Urumqi,
from her arrival in Xinjiang on July 6 until the segment was posted on YouTube
yesterday. CPJ cited Chan's messages in our news
alert on Tuesday, but we're reproducing a longer extract because of the
insight she offers into the situation for journalists on the ground, as well as
the opportunities--and limitations--offered by the micro-blogging format itself.

We haven't been able to reach Chan yet directly and have not
confirmed all the content of her tweets, but she continued to post updates
today. About four hours ago she posted: "No internet from phone and my laptop
is down. Will be even harder to twitter now." You can monitor what happens next
on her Twitter page.

melissakchan

Off to Xinjiang. Will tweet what we find on the ground in a
few hours.3:35 AM
Jul 6th

Twitter appears to be blocked suddenly in China - possibly because of the Urumqi rioting? I'm using a proxy but updates
will now be harder.3:39
AM Jul 6th

Madeline Earp is senior researcher for CPJ’s Asia Program. She has studied Mandarin in China and Taiwan, and graduated with a master’s in East Asian studies from Harvard. Follow her on Twitter @cpjasia and Facebook @ CPJ Asia Desk.